The most remarkable Armenian poet under the Bagratuni dynasty was Grigor Narekatzi (951–1009), who has been called the Pindar of Armenia and has also been canonised as a saint. From his pen came elegies, odes, panegyrics, and homilies. His sacred elegies (ninety-five in number) are elevated in style, showing Arabian influence, and very pure in sentiment. His canticles and melodies are still chanted in the Armenian Church. Verbosity is a characteristic of his work; in one passage the word “God” is accompanied by ninety adjectives. He was greatly loved and revered by the people, but he aroused jealousy in some of his ecclesiastical colleagues. On one occasion, they went to the Catholicos with accusations against him. The Catholicos appointed priests to investigate the case. These priests repaired to the abbey where Grigor Narekatzi was, arriving about dinner time on a Friday. To their surprise they found roast pigeons on the table, and reminded Grigor that it was fast-day, whereupon the latter said, addressing himself to the pigeons: “If that be so, off with you!” and the roasted birds took to themselves wings and flew away. The astonished investigators, without going into the case, turned back and reported the miracle to the Catholicos. Of course this is an extravagant legend, but it shows the high estimation in which Grigor Narekatzi was held by his contemporaries. The greatest work of this writer and the one on which his fame rests is Narek. It is divided into ninety-five chapters, and is a tragic devotional monologue composed of poetical prayers. Here the author reveals his heart and soul in converse with God. Hope, fear, love, faith, repentance, entreaty, aspiration, breathe as if mingled with tears in fine and noble lines and periods. There is a copious stream of epithets, a flood of rhetoric, an unfailing flow of ideas. With all this wealth of diction, this work is sincere and strikingly original, and gives evidence of the author’s high-soaring imagination. He begins with an address to God, in which he represents himself as one of the vilest of creatures, saying that, if all the trees in all the forests of the world were pens and all the seas ink, they would not suffice to write down his sins, but towards even such sinfulness as this the mercy of God is great, and the Creator is so powerful that it will be possible for Him to bleach the sins as white as snow. This work gives evidence that its author had, on the one hand, great love of God and a firm faith, and on the other hand a vivid imagination and poetic fire. All this he has worded together with great skill.